According to the Israeli financial website Globes, Sheldon Adelson is in advanced negotiations to purchase the Ha’aretz printing plant. The deal is believed to be in the order of $25 million dollars.

Over the past few months, Adelson’s free daily, Yisrael Hayom, has been searching for a new printing facility to replace the Ha’aretz plant where it currently prints its daily freesheet. Ha’aretz’s plant handles the printing for a number of different newspapers.

Adelson had recently been in negotiations with Nochi Dankner, a major shareholder and chairman of publicly traded IDB Group, Israel’s largest diversified business group with assets of more than $30 billion, to purchase Ma’ariv’s Levin Epstein Printing House. But that deal apparently fell through, striking a hard blow for Ma’ariv which is desperately strapped for cash. Ma’ariv has been looking to sell the printing plant and the land it sits on.

Many Israeli newspapers have been firing staff and “streamlining” these past few months. The right-wing Makor Rishon is one notable exception to the rule.

Globes reports that Ha’aretz announced it was firing 70 employees, some 32 from their own paper, and the rest from their financial daily, The Marker. Yediot Achronot will be firing dozens, many of them likely to be dropped from its website Ynet. Ma’ariv recently shut down its weekday print run, and fired 30 employees in June.

Yediot executives are blaming Adelson and Yisrael Hayom for destroying the Israeli newspaper industry, and more specifically, for destroying Ha’aretz and Yediot Achronot with the introduction of the free daily broadsheet.

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6 Responses to “Is Sheldon Adelson Destroying Israel’s Newspapers?”

Most of the Israeli media doesn't deserve to survive, I'd happily see Haaretz & Ynet go down the tubes. The public is sick & tired of Leftist BS. I read Israel HaYom & Arutz 7. Sheldon Adelson is a real mensch & deserving of great respect.

Although Adelson is associated with strong views about economics, his interest in Israeli newspapers does not base itself on the economically feasible. He is so wealthy that what he "loses" in terms of expenses vs. monetary returns, it is "chump change." So he supports an Israeli government with his newspaper that is economically more rightwing in its economic philosophy than any previous Israeli governement, showing that he believes the ends justify the means, even if it also means that viewpoints to the left of Adelson and this Israeli government will be squelched, but "democracy" is still a nice name.

This is self-serving nonsense. Time magazine, Newsweek, etc. are hurting. The economist is thriving. The New York Times is hurting. The Wall Street Journal is thriving. As a reader of all these papers I find Haaretz to be deceptive and the source of much anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments in the rest of the press throughout the world. Unfortunately, too many Israeli newspeople believe it is their God given right to attack Netanyahu and pontificate on numerous items that they have no knowledge of and certainly no responsibility with. No, it's not Mr. Adelson who is destroying Haaretz. It is the writers, editors and owners of Haaretz constantly get caught saying one thing and Hebrew and another thing in English.

A big fat disgusting BS!!! Even Yisrael Hayom is *NOT* a staunchly conservative newspaper. It very often publishes leftist defamotory crap. you simply don'"t know what you're talkin' 'bout, but that's understandable being on the other side of the globe regularly brainwashed by the nonstop churning of lies and spins of the so-called liberal media whores of the alphabet soup channels and the abominable NYT, WP, HuffPo etc. etc. etc.